Over the years, I have been a member of any number of writing communities, and by and large, I have always been struck by how all of them are generally unhealthy environments for encouraging writers to produce good writing and improve their craft. My concerns have roots beyond erotica, and are perhaps more inspired by various writing groups I have led and attended during college and the years after. Generally, I have been disappointed in these sorts of groups for any number of reasons, although by far the greatest reason is that spectre of “constructive criticism”, which tends to force everyone in the room to praise pieces of writing which are exceedingly poor, leading to what essentially becomes a system of providing critical blowjobs for every writer present, whether they want to or not. Generally, the greatest sin someone can commit is being too critical–all writing is redeemable, any act of writing is fundamentally good. Online communities, on the other hand, have a distinctly different problem. The ease and pleasure of trolling allows online communities to effectively police, discourage, and even outright censor stories and writing which they deem offensive to their particular desires. I am convinced that there must be some needle hole to thread in the middle, but it eludes me, and I doubt such a perfect middle-ground actually exists anyway. Still, it presents a problem–what exactly is the role of these sorts of online communities and collections? Is it to help authors improve and encourage them to write more? Is it to provide an audience with a particular kind of story? What exactly are they designed to accomplish? I believe the phenomenon of inter-authorial thematic repetition I presented before can shed a bit of light on these questions.
Of course, there aren’t exactly a bevy of collections to discuss in this genre, so some of these conclusions will by necessity be based on a rather small sample size. In particular, I will be discussing the NCMC, CYOC, MCStories, the Nifty Archive, and both of Maelstrom’s now defunct archives focused on TF fiction and tobacco fetish fiction respectively. This, I think, is a large enough base to draw a few broad conclusions about the various techniques these communities are based on, and how they affect the sorts of stories and themes these collections accumulate.
I want to begin with the NCMC, which I’m sure surprises no one. There’s more reason to this than one might think, however. The NCMC is unique among the various sites I just mentioned for a number of, what I consider to be, very illustrative reasons. In particular because, more than any other collection still operating, it possesses a collection with a much more cohesive theme than any other. Now, as a bit of disclaimer, because the NCMC is a constantly evolving community and collection, the ideas and themes it tends to accumulate are always in a state of flux. Anything I say now could very well no longer be true six months from now, or even sooner. One particularly good story can spawn a bevy of imitators, old ruts which fell out of fashion years ago can suddenly reappear stronger than ever, so I hesitate to say say that the NCMC possesses a “defined” theme or set of ideas, but loosely examined, there are a few ideas which can be drawn from the kinds of stories the NCMC tends to attract. More often than not, the stories are driven by wish fulfillment rather than revenge. They are stories which are interested in making men more “typically desirable” (i.e. muscular, twinkish but not necessarily femme, sexually promiscuous bottoms, etc.) If a revenge fantasy is a plot point, it is less about punishing someone by turning them into what they hate, and more about turning them into something which will bring pleasure to the person correcting the injustice. When I say that the NCMC is generally not receptive to the kinds of stories I write, that’s because most of my story arcs tend to aim in the exact opposite directions. On the other hand, MaelstromX’s TF site possess themes more similar to mine, where revenge is more often about punishment than pleasure, where men become “atypically desirable,” though the site also possess a strong line of wish fulfillment as well. His old site focusing on smoke TF stories is different from the other two as well, with a stronger focus on cross generational nurturing relationships more than anything else. All of this might seem rather unimportant, or merely academic in nature, but what I want to point out is that the reason these sites possess any sort of specific focus in their themes is because of how these communities and collections are structured.
As a counterexample, let’s look at CYOC, the Nifty Archive and MCStories. All three of these are sizable archives, all of them possessing much more content than the NCMC, however none of these sites possesses anything like the strong thematic consistency the NCMC. Part of this is because these sites allow a much broader range of submissions, and thereby deal with a greater volume of stories in general. Themes then, multiply. This is especially obvious on CYOC, where this repetition is made even more direct through the continuation of another person’s story, or through the lengthening of your own work with the addition of further chapters. Thus, because there are so many threads, it makes more sense to start looking at subsections of these sites, where themes become clearer. the CYOC interactive “Ty’s Power”, for example, tends to be revenge focused, but also examines themes of puberty and becoming an adult, as well as what it means to be a part of family–especially in terms of siblings. The Nifty Archive possesses some themes once the site is divided into various genres, but these become harder to trace without the interactive structure of CYOC. MCStories is perhaps the most difficult, because stories are treated more as isolated chunks than as part of a larger system of categories. The site does possess fetish tags, but these are largely underutilized and deal more with superficial elements than anything else. As such, finding a story of a similar deep theme quickly becomes the task of finding needles in haystacks.
So what’s the difference? Why does the NCMC possess a clear set of themes, while CYOC, Nifty, and MCStories do not? The biggest difference between these two sets of sites is that the NCMC is the only one with any sort of numerical rating system, and it also possesses the most robust comment system. The NCMC is really the only website that provides an author with immediate feedback on their story, both quantitative and qualitative. I would argue this does little for the author–because these numbers and comments aren’t generally feedback an author can use to improve their work–but it does show that the audience possesses a great deal of power at the NCMC. The power to rate a story means that if an audience finds the themes, ideas, and content of a story distasteful, they can immediately communicate that with poor scores and trollish comments. This more than anything is what determines whether or not an author will keep contributing to the site. In this way, the NCMC doesn’t necessarily encourage authors to express a particular viewpoint, rather it’s structure allows the site’s audience to quickly discourage and downrate content which does not reflect the themes and ideas they want to see. It also possesses silent moderation, who can strip stories from the site without appeal. If anyone has the most power to shape the NCMC, it would be them.
Nifty and MCStories possess no such system at all. The stories are simply posted, with a link to an email if you’d like to send a comment (assuming the author allowed it to be accessible). Feedback is very inconsistent and not very meaningful; trolls are sparse and easily ignored. As such, no one is actively discouraged from posting, allowing the number of stories it hosts to grow rapidly. CYOC is somewhat different from the others, in that it does provide a means of giving feedback, but in a very different way than the NCMC. The most meaningful feedback that someone on CYOC can give a story is validation by continuing it. As such, rather than discouraging authors from contributing, CYOC’s structure encourages readers to become writers, to provide feedback on their favorite ideas and themes by adding to them and amplifying them. It does possess a rather robust forum, of course, but rarely is it used to discuss and rate particular chapters and threads. This, in my opinion, is what makes CYOC so fantastic as a collection–its design encourages both participation and proliferation, in a way the NCMC will never be able to do as it’s currently structured.
I’m sure that, at this point, it sounds like I detest the NCMC with all passion. In fact, the NCMC’s ability to hone down their thematic focus allows a range of stories there which are highly creative which no other site could produce, such as this odd postmodern work, “Too Meta”. While CYOC is capable of a wide range of stories with disparate themes, without any moderation it quickly can devolve in poorly written, overly short chapters with no development at all. Each tool has its place, and CYOC could use more moderation, while the NCMC, in my opinion, could use less (or simply moderation wielded equally). The question, I think, is who do we want these sites to serve? The readers and audience, or the authors themselves? The NCMC is firmly in the audience camp–everything about the site’s design is focused on providing its audience with the kinds of thematic content they desire, and making it easy for the reader to find stories similar one’s they’ve liked before. Whether or not this model helps writer’s improve or encourages more submissions is completely secondary. On the other hand, CYOC is much more author-focused. It urges readers to stop being passive consumers of content and instead generate their own. Feedback is less concerned with how well a story is written or whether it fits the desired theme of an audience, and more about whether it contains ideas and themes that inspire other people to continue the story further. Is one model better than the other? It depends on what you value more than anything else.
There is one more aspect of this discussion I want to address in a third post (sorry, not sorry) which is what it means to say that we wish there were more “new” stories in the context of this repetition. An author’s constant foe is the threat of stagnation, of retreading the same old theme without any sort of development and nuance, and I want to talk about how I, as an author, do my best to avoid ruts. Further, when an author does do something “new”, how various communities deal with this newness is also something worth examining. Then I’ll be done with this for now.
Bracken's Corner 